Her escape is one of great adventure, danger and abuse, and her life in Korea was not much better as the government is very repressive and controls almost every aspect of people’s lives. There is a lot of propaganda in the small nation, as they are told to hate Americans in particular, and that the rest of the world is evil.

People are afraid to talk, or even speak in private, because they could be punished for saying the wrong thing. Yeonmi Park said she saw a woman executed for doing something minor.

She and her mother escaped one night by crossing a frozen river and getting into China. Across the Gobi Desert they walked all the way to Mongolia. That took years. Eventually Yeonmi made her way to South Korea and to freedom.

The North Korean News government has heard her speak, or at least read stories about her, and have put out a video trying to paint her and her parents and puppets of America. She said she changed some details of her story to protect people she knows still in North Korea, and she said there were some language problems early on when she told her story.

She said people are starving in North Korea. She said she had no idea how much food there was in the world, and is amazed at how much is thrown away in America. E